


I wanna be your boyfriend, chapter four

by The_night_max



Series: I wanna be your boyfriend [4]
Category: Entourage
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5232671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_night_max/pseuds/The_night_max
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter four! See others for details, possible spoilers up to S4 I think...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wanna be your boyfriend, chapter four

Vince wakes up, remembers last night; the awful premier and then instantly not caring about that even a little. He remembers Eric in his arms and Eric’s arms around him, lips soft on the back of his neck and he feels happiness clutch in his stomach. He rolls over, and finds the bed rumpled but empty. He glances over at the bathroom, but the door is open and the shower isn’t running. Vine starts to feel slightly uneasy and rolls out of bed to check out the lounge and balcony. No E. He shouts him, like he might somehow have missed him, or like E might be hiding somewhere as a prank. When there’s no answer, he retrieves his phone from the jeans he barely remembers taking off so that he can call E, but there’s already a text message on the screen, saying that E woke up early and he’ll see Vince whenever he makes it down for breakfast. No kiss and no mention of last night. Vince knows this isn’t good and the flutter of joy that he woke up to is abruptly snuffed out. Suddenly, he feels something that falls between misery and panic and the hangover he hadn’t noticed before churns his stomach and makes his head throb and his eyes ache. He flops down into a chair and drops his face into his hands, reeling from the rejection that hasn’t officially happened yet. With gut-wrenching clarity, he pictures Eric treating him with forced, awkward politeness. Badly concealed pity. Breaking Vince’s heart by being kind and careful and acting like he can undo what happened last night by just never acknowledging it. Fuck, he thinks. They won’t get through this.

He’s still sitting in the same position, wondering whether the thing he wants to do most is start drinking again, throw up or get Ari to find him the first flight home when there’s a knock on the door. It takes him a moment to realise that he needs to answer it himself.

As though the process of Vince thinking about him has summoned him like an angry genie, it’s Ari. He looks, as ever, like an ageing Johnny Bravo in his suit – too big for it, like he put it on then grew three sizes and now couldn’t take it off if he wanted to. Vince doesn’t have the energy for anyone right now, never mind Ari but he wearily stands aside to let him into the room. Ari’s arm is immediately around Vince’s bare shoulders and he feels pathetic for being oddly comforted by it. He pulls away and sits back down, dropping his head back into his hands.

“Vinnie, baby, you ok?”  
“I’m fine Ari”  
“Good. Good! Of course you are – you look good. And you’re my star and last night doesn’t mean anything, right? Fuck those fuckers. We’re gonna fix it all up ok?”  
For a beat, half listening, he wonders how Ari knows, and why he wants to help fix things with Eric, before remembering that before he ruined his most important friendship, he ruined his career and that’s what Ari is trying to reassure him about. Right now, Vince barely cares. He lets Ari’s voice roll over him, lulling him with promises of finding someone to re-edit Medellin, of making it good again, getting it to the right people; saving Vince’s reputation, making sure this isn’t his last movie. He can’t really focus on Ari’s plan and has no idea if it includes him actually doing anything. He wishes Eric was here to be part of this, to rein his agent in where he needs it and answer for Vince in all the right places. Thinking about Eric and this small part of their closeness is just unbearable and suddenly he can’t deal with a second more of Ari. He stands up abruptly.

“Ari, I don’t feel so good right now. Can we do this later? And can you tell all this to E?”  
“Uh… sure Vin. You alright? Just a hangover right?”  
“Yeah, Ari. Just a hangover”  
“Hey, where is Mini Me anyway? They shooting a remake of Don’t Look Now?”  
“I don’t know” mumbles Vince and, oh fuck, Ari has to stop talking about Eric right now.  
“He managed to get someone to finally perform the operation to have him surgically removed from your ass? Yeah, well, it’s pretty shitty timing Eric. It physically pains me to say it, like I literally feel like I’m vomiting up a hairball, but you actually need him right now. He’s responsible for this ratfuck, he’s sure as shit going to help un-fuck it” 

Ari doesn’t seem to have noticed that somewhere around “you actually need him” Vince has to pinch the bridge of his nose and dig in his nails. Focusing on the sharp pinch gives him a few seconds to pull himself together and he doesn’t lose it and start ugly crying. He wonders what Ari would do if he did. 

“Ari, just… unless you wanna hear me throw up…”  
“Vinnie, you know if you need someone to hold your hair back I’m here for you all the way”  
“Thanks. I got it. I’ll see you later, ok?”

Ari goes and Vince doesn’t throw up, but he does shower and get dressed. He puts on a t-shirt which E has told him suits him and hates himself a little for it. He examines his face in the mirror and although there are dark half moons under his eyes he’s fairly sure that’s just alcohol and lack of sleep. Otherwise, his face looks like it always does. He sort of wishes he looked worse – gaunt or hollow-eyed or some of the other things he’s read in scripts, so that E could look at him and instantly know he was hurt and feel bad. He brushes his teeth a second time before he leaves the bathroom and thinks fuck, why, to himself, because the thought at the back of his mind is that he needs fresh breath because maybe he and E will kiss. He aches to be able to just walk up to Eric at breakfast, grab hold of him and pull him up and into a kiss right there in the restaurant. But even if he could do that without it instantly being the property of a million strangers, he’s sure E wouldn’t kiss him back.

He heads out of the room and realises halfway down the hallway that he doesn’t have the card thing that unlocks it. Vince never usually needs to remember things like that. In the lift, he fights the impulse to just go back to his room, get back in bed, wrap himself in the soft down comforter and pretend this isn’t happening. But he can’t get back into the room and even if he could, he and E are still sharing, so he’d still have to see him, so he just waits til the doors of the lift glide open on the second floor, takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he’s been pretending he’s ok about this for more than two decades. He can carry on. He has to.

Eric is sitting alone, turned at an angle to the entrance, so he doesn’t see Vince coming in, but Vince can see him. He has coffee and is picking at a pain au chocolat, forehead resting on his palm, eyes not really focussed on anything, jaw clenched tight. Vince’s stomach roils and he takes a couple of deep breaths, ribcage shivering. His heart is in his throat, choking him and when he sits down next to Eric and quietly says ‘hey’ his voice is tight and short and he feels like it lays bare everything he’s desperate not to show E.

Eric looks at him quickly and doesn’t meet his eyes.  
‘Hey’ he mumbles, and then swallows so hard Vince sees his Adam’s apple jerk.  
‘I, uh, you sure got up early’  
‘Yeah. Vin, last night was… I was – we were both so drunk.’ He pauses and drops his voice almost to a whisper even though they’re the only ones in the restaurant. ‘It’s ok though. We fucked up, but… we just don’t let it come between us, right?’  
Vince doesn’t reply. What he wants to do is ask Eric if he’s fucking kidding, does he remember what he said last night – what he did? He wants to tell Eric that it can’t be a mistake, because he knows from the way Eric kissed him last night, the way he lay with Vince tight in his arms, that it wasn’t a mistake. He needs to tell Eric that last night, everything finally, finally fell into place. He can’t form any kind of other answer, so he just stays quiet. He would let Eric know some of this with a look he’s absolutely confident E could read, but Eric won’t or can’t meet his eyes.  
“Vin?” He lifts his head this time, but he stares at a spot somewhere near Vince’s ear. “Are you ok?”  
Vince laughs hard and bitter.  
“E, six hours ago I had your cock in my mouth and you were pretty sure you were just fine with that, so I’m sorry if it’s taking me a minute to catch up”, he says, managing to keep his tone fairly even.  
“Jesus Vin, not here” Eric hisses, face bright red, burning with shame. Good, thinks Vince.  
“Where, then? We could have talked upstairs, but you ran away like the room was on fire because you couldn’t bear the thought of facing me. Because you couldn’t deal with waking up in bed with me”  
This time, it’s Eric who can’t seem to form a reply and Vince isn’t sure there’s anything stopping him from losing control of this conversation and letting everything he wants to say spill out.  
So many times, Eric has said the right thing. So many times, he’s known just what Vince needed to hear. It hurts more that he can’t do it now; now, when it matters more than Eric believing he could make a career out of acting, believing he could make it out of Queens, believing he could get the first small job; the first big job.  
Vince drops his head into his hands, because he is dangerously close to crying and the urge to cover his face is like a primal urge for self-preservation.  
“Vin, I’m sorry”  
Eric’s voice cracks a little and it’s just too much. Vince pushes himself up from the table and focuses every fragment of himself, every breath, every movement, on walking out of the restaurant normally. His eyes sting from being held wide and tense, because if be blinks the wetness behind them is going to gather and spill. By the time he reaches the hallway to his room, his throat burns and he has to keep rubbing his eyes. He’s walking along, head down, when a door opens and someone steps out too quickly for the two of them to avoid an awkward sideways step dance. Vince doesn’t even register who it is until the other person says “Vince?”  
Lloyd gently catches his wrist.  
“Vince, are you ok?”  
Vince stops, faces him and shakes his head.  
“Uh, do you want to come in?” he indicates toward his room and Vince nods.

 

Vince has never told anyone, but the day he walked into Ari Gold’s office and saw Lloyd had replaced whichever previous assistant Ari had either fired or terrorised into quitting, he felt like he was about to have a heart attack.

Before Vince got the first real part, before he wore Eric down enough that he finally said yes to coming to LA, when he was lonely and scared and sad, and when he didn’t have to be quite so careful because nobody knew to look, he went out on his own to a bar. He was living with Johnny at the time and Jesus, he knows his brother loves him but it’s exhausting. He was sitting at the bar working on his third beer, wondering seriously for the first time - that day, at least - about whether he should just give up and go back to Queens; back to his mom and E, when someone took the seat next to him. They didn’t talk for a while, not until Lloyd – whose name Vince still didn’t know at the time – ordered his second drink and asked if Vince would like one. He was about to say no when he suddenly wanted company as strongly as he’d wanted to be on his own when he’d left Johnny rehearsing his scenes for the next day.

Lloyd ordered them both spiced rum and cokes and introduced himself. By that point, Vince had been with enough guys to know when he was being hit on and that definitely wasn’t what was happening here. He’d wonder later if it was maybe just because he was a little drunk, but he felt like Lloyd picked up on his unhappiness right away, and that was why it was so easy to talk to him.

“So, Vincent Chase, why are you alone and a little drunk on a Thursday night?”  
Usually, Vince would lie – or just not give up the truth, but whether it’s the beers, his mood or something about Lloyd, he tells him everything. How much he misses home, the fear that he’s actually not good enough to do this, all the loneliness and insecurity of the past few months pour out. It’s cathartic to not pretend to someone that everything is great. Mostly, he talks about how things just don’t work without Eric.  
“So do you think your Eric is gonna come out here for you?”  
“I dunno… Yeah. Yeah, probably. Eventually. There’s nothing to keep him in Queens”  
“Not now you’re not there”  
“I didn’t mean it like that. Just, it’s just a boring shitty job and a boring shitty life if he stays”  
“A boring shitty life you just said you’re seriously thinking about going back to”  
“Well. Yeah”  
“Because Eric is there”  
“No. I…“ the no is a reflex and Vince cuts himself off. Looks at Lloyd. Starts over “Yeah. Because Eric is there. I just… without him, I feel like I can’t be myself, because part of me is always second guessing what he’d think; what he’d tell me to do. When we’re together, I can just be myself. I don’t have to worry about what Eric would do because he’s right there taking care of it. Of me, I guess. I just… I don’t work without him. Does that sound ridiculous?”  
“No” Lloyd smiles and puts his hand gently on Vince’s forearm “No, it doesn’t sound ridiculous. Maybe a little co-dependent…”  
“I just know that if I can get him to come out here, everything will work out. E makes me focus, you know? He’ll have a plan. He’ll have, like, read stuff. I can’t do it without him, I’m not organised and I don’t know anything and… and I’m just” he stops abruptly and looks down at his rum. Impulsive and unhappy, putting his trust in this total stranger, he gives Lloyd a look that is weary and sad. “I’m in love with him”, he says softly. “So fucking hopelessly in love with him”  
“It doesn’t sound hopeless. It sounds like he loves you too”  
“Oh, he does. But, like, lowercase L, ‘hey, I love you buddy’ love, not capital L ‘you have my heart and I want you forever’ love”  
Lloyd just gives him a half smile.  
“If that guy moves across the country for you, it’s more than just buddy love”  
“Yeah, well he hasn’t left Queens yet”  
“Well, I tell you what, Vincent: make me a promise, ok? If he moves out here for you, you find a way to tell him, ok?”  
Vince pulls a face he hopes isn’t too pathetic. “If he does, and the timing is ever right, I promise you I will”  
Lloyd smiles, then stands up. “I have to go meet people. But, it was good talking to you Vince. You keep that promise. Oh, and call this guy” he hands Vince a business card “He’s like, a super agent. If anyone can get you jobs it’s him. One day, I swear to you Vince I’m gonna work for him”  
Vince thanks him, pockets the card and thinks that he’ll call Eric in the morning and ask him if he should call this Ari guy.

The next time he sees Lloyd is that day he was suddenly at the desk outside Ari’s office and thrust right into the centre of Vince’s life. For a while, he wondered if Lloyd remembered their evening together. Sure, he’d seen the flicker of surprised recognition and the flush of his cheeks that first day, but by that time, just about everyone looked at Vince that way.

It was a few weeks before he got an answer. He was on his own in Ari’s office, because E had gone out to take a phone call and Ari had gone out to do… something. Probably kill someone. Lloyd came in with drinks and hovered a little awkwardly.  
“Um, so, I guess you’re maybe wondering if I remember, that, uh, that time in the bar”  
“I was, actually”  
“I’ve never told anyone, Vince. Well, I mean, I did at the time. Like I met my friends and I was all like ‘oh my god, I met the cutest guy, but he’s totally in love with some other guy and it’s so sad’. But not since then, not since everyone knew who you were. Definitely not Ari”  
“Thanks Lloyd. You’re not going to right? Nobody knows”  
Lloyd mimes buttoning his lips together and shakes his head. After a beat, he says: “he came, then?”  
Vince nods.  
“But you never… found a way?”  
He shakes his head.  
Lloyd looks like he’s about to say something else, but then Ari bowls in and bellows “Lloyd, what the fuck are you doing in here talking to my client like you’re a real person instead of someone I keep to bring my coffee and remind me how awful my life could be? Get. The fuck. Out”  
And Lloyd goes and they never talk about it again.

Not until now, here in Lloyd’s room in Cannes, where Vince walks in with Lloyd’s arm across his back guiding him into a chair. By the time he’s sitting down he’s crying. Lloyd doesn’t say anything, just sits down opposite Vince and lets Vince get it out. When he’s regained a little control, Lloyd reaches over the tiny coffee table that separates their chairs and a little awkwardly pats him on the shoulder.  
“Is this about what I think it is?”  
Vince doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything.  
“Vince, sweetie, did you tell him?”  
Vince gives him the tiniest nod.  
“Oh, boy. Vince, c’mere” he says, so kindly it makes Vince hate himself even more, and Lloyd leans over and wraps his arms tightly around Vince.


End file.
